The Bull & Bear | Winter 2022 - Once in a Blue Moon

ONTENT

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Features

Open Doors Over the Years

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Nuit Blanche 2022 Illuminates Local Art and Culture

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Investment Banking is NOT the Coolest Job on Wall Street Anymore…and for Students, That’s a Good Thing

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Spirituality and Sickness: Religion Post-Pandemic

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The Generation of Miracles

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News

For Climate Researchers, ‘Uncertainty Crisis’ Looms Large Student-Approved, Once in a Lifetime Courses

Arts & Culture Voices from the Footnotes Podcast Unsilences the Past

Dear Gen Z: Don’t Digitize the Thrift Store

Business & Tech How McGill Alumnus Peyush Bansal Gave an India a Vision The Future is Nu-Clearer

Opinion

Joy Rides to Space are Harming Mankind Quebec’s Hospitals Need a Major Boost

Sports

In Men’s Tennis, A Rivalry to Define an Age Once in a Red Moon: The Rise of the Canadian Men’s Soccer Team

(Executive Editor)

I am writing this note in my student apartment after my final ever Copy Edit Night for the Bull & Bear. For the past three hours, the executives, section editors, and copy editors of this news magazine gathered in my cramped Milton-Parc apartment, sweating under surgical masks and winter jackets, as we collectively edited the articles for our Winter 2022 print issue. Now, as I clean pizza plates and double-check our Google Docs spreadsheets for typos, I realize that I cannot begin to explain to you my admiration for this outstanding group of people.

Without the people running it, The Bull & Bear is just an Internet domain floating in the vastness of outer space. Our team of over seventy student writers, designers, and contributors has proven their outstanding dedication to their craft time and time again. Our staff writers have demonstrated talent and flexibility by consistently pitching new and exciting ideas during changing lockdown restrictions. Our Operations Unit designed hoodies and toques that belong on runways, our Business Unit kept our paper afloat through creative fundraisers, and the design and media team are responsible for this gorgeous magazine. Together, we have kept the McGill community informed, spoken truth to power, and even confronted a lawyer.

This year, we wanted to choose a print issue theme that was as extraordinary as our Bull & Bear staff. “Once in a Blue Moon” embodies the rare and spectacular moments in our campus experiences. Whether it is exploring a surreal art festival in downtown Montreal, celebrating the anniversary of a beloved Montreal business, or finding new opportunities to connect with spirituality, this year has provided our dedicated writers with opportunities to address everyday phenomena in our undergraduate lives.

For many of us graduating students, we are also blasting off into uncharted territory. The pandemic has forced us to collectively rethink our relationship to the environment, to healthcare, and to our work-life balance. These lessons will propel us through the rest of our adult lives.

On a more personal note, this issue marks the seventh and final print issue I have contributed to during my time at McGill. I joined The Bull & Bear in the fall of 2018 as an idealistic U0 student, eager to find a club that spoke to my interests in writing and editing. I expected to find a fun distraction from my studies and maybe a way to make new friends. Instead, I found a community and a way of life. Being a part of the Bull & Bear team for the past four years, and working alongside Rose and Linnea as an executive team for the past year has been a once in a lifetime opportunity. My love for this group is astronomical.

Prepare for launch, team. See you on the other side of the moon.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Sam Shepherd

REDIT

EXECUTIVE BOARD Co-Executive Editor Rose Bostwick

Co-Executive Editor Sam Shepherd

Managing Editor Linnea Vidger

Design Director

BUSINESS UNIT Business Director Alice Guo

Finance Officer Rohaim Khan

Sales Managers

Erin Sass

Anna Abramova, Yi Y Chen, Hope Zhang, Maya Rundic

Media Director

Sales Coordinator

Drake Wong

EDITORIAL BOARD

Christina Schleifer

OPERATIONS TEAM

News Editors

Operations Director

Arts & Culture Editors

Operations Staff

Claire Chang & Makenna Crackower

Hannah Wallace & Olivia Whetstone

Anna Marukhnyak

Anna Abramova, Maxine Bisera, Lauren Bailet, Ece Sitki

Business & Tech Editors Sean Kim & Julian Robinson

Opinion Editors

Sarah Sylvester & Alia Shaukat

Sports Editors

Josh Holtzman & Ezra Moleko

Copy Editors

Maria Hernandez, Leo Holton, Sean Udeh, Melissa Downey, Abigail Segal

DESIGN Design Director Erin Sass

Illustration, layout, and creative direction @erin_sass_design | erinsass.com

Media Director Drake Wong

Photography @doingthewongthing

Open DoOrs OvER the Years NEWS

by Makenna Crackower & Claire Chang

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NEWS

As Montreal learns to live with the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses are starting to recover from two years of repeated government mandated closures. As a result of the difficulties of maintaining a business during the pandemic, many shops and restaurants in Montreal, like Tokyo Bar, have closed for good.

However, while COVID-19 has been a trying time for all, some of Montreal’s oldest businesses continue to operate in much of the same fashion that they have for decades. The Bull and Bear has decided to highlight some beloved businesses in Montreal that have stayed open despite the test of time, and they are a testament to their resilience during this once-in-a-lifetime period.

Segal’s Segal’s is a grocery store on Rue Saint Laurent that can be easily missed when walking by; the only recognizable aspect is a fading sign that says “Epicerie: Depuis 1927.” Known for its low prices, Segal’s is a staple for locals looking to avoid high grocery bills. Segal’s has mysteriously been able to keep its prices lower than that of larger grocery chains, even for products like organic produce and pantry staples. As the sign boasts, Segal’s has been around for almost a hundred years, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating brickand-mortar stores in the city.

However, the interior is nothing special, explains frequent customer and U3 Arts student, Thiora Meegammana. “It’s a bit run down and crowded on the inside so the atmosphere can be a bit stressful,” she told the Bull and Bear. “But it’s worth it for the good prices and food selection.

I’m always pleasantly surprised with the total price of my grocery haul not being ridiculously expensive for the amount of food I buy.”

The Montreal Gazette reported back in 2018 that the owner, Jeffrey Segal, is

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not eager to talk to the press, leaving customers wondering exactly how this business could sell its wares so cheaply.

The Gazette wrote that it might simply be because the owner is a good bargainer with wholesalers, but there are other theories as well. Meegammana said she “heard that it has something to do with their rent. They’ve had the place for a very long time and (might) have some kind of fixed rent so as other places’ rent increased, Segal’s stayed the same. It’s either that or the owner owns the place and doesn’t pay rent.”

Whatever the reason for its prices, Segal’s has attracted a very loyal customer base over the last century. On Mcgill’s reddit page r/mcgill, several redditors describe Segal’s as “beloved” and “a game changer” and when people ask about places to get good, cheap food, Segal’s is always in the conversation.

La Vieille Europe St-Laurent is host to another popular grocery, La Vieille Europe. This shop has been around since 1959 and specialises in mostly imported European specialty products. Originally called Old Europe Meat Market, La Vieille Europe started as a butchery and slowly expanded into a full epicerie in the 1980s when it changed ownership. The current owners are Paulo Raimundo, Steve De Silva and Nelson dos Santos, the latter of which took over from their fathers.

When entering the store, customers are greeted by rows of cheeses, both local and imported, cut at various serving sizes, and fresh baguettes. The store also boasts a meat counter that sells difficult to find cuts, including sausages that, as one German student tells the Bull and Bear, they haven’t seen outside their home country. Along the winding racks one will find marinated olives and fancy olive oils, squid ink pasta and sauces, and coffee roasted right there in

the store. One half of the store is almost entirely dedicated to European snack items, including biscuits, chocolate, and tea.

La Vieille Europe prides itself on giving its customers the best. Its website informs that there is even a bee colony housed on the roof of the store to provide customers with fresh local honey.

The small shop also hosts a coffee counter, where customers can get relatively cheap cappuccinos and hefty sandwiches.

Le Vieux Dublin Le Vieux Dublin, sometimes called “Old Dub” by students, is the oldest Irish pub in the city, established in 1978. Known for its impressive scotch list and beers on tap, students who tire of traditional Montreal nightlife often visit for a relaxed night and a pint with close friends.

Matthew Fields, a U3 cello performance student, told the B&B that “Old Dub” is a music school tradition; orchestra members often go there after a concert to celebrate. “The clientele is a wider range, than targeting a specific demographic,” explained Fields. “It’s the perfect place to go if you just want to have a drink and talk. That’s pretty unique for a bar, actually being able to hear the person you’re talking to.” He also cited the staff being relaxed and friendly as a contributing factor for the bar’s overall success.

Chantal de Luca, a U3 sustainability student who has been going to the bar since her first year, stated that the bar feels like a Montreal staple. “It feels like a place that’s been there for a while, it has a lot of charm,” she said, explaining why she believes the bar has been around for so long. “It probably has a pretty established place in the community, and it definitely seems like it has regulars who are loyal. It’s just a warm place with

good character.” The bar also targets a much wider audience, since it is a bit further from campus than the usual StLaurent hotspots. “It’s not just students, but young professionals and older customers too.”

Café Santropol Opened in 1976, Cafe Santropol has become a popular fixture for locals in the Plateau neighbourhood with its outdoor terrace, garden, and reasonably priced food. However, despite having weathered the various challenges of being in business for 46 years, the cafe struggled to stay afloat during the lockdown.

Founder and owner Garth Gilker emphasised that “COVID-19 has been very difficult” for the cafe. “I have to thank the people of Canada and the [federal] government,” he said. “Without much bureaucracy they were able to subsidise salaries and rent: without that we would not have survived.”

Gilker explained that the cafe started because he wanted to save the building—which had been built around 1880 and “is older than Vancouver”— from being demolished by the city. Now a heritage site due to the building’s historical nature, the cafe has become a hotspot for McGillians living in the area looking for a place to study or catch up with friends. * Montreal is home to many familiar favourites and old comforts, for McGill students and for the whole of the city.

Whether it’s for the delicious food, inviting ambiance, or killer prices, locals keep coming back to these old haunts time and time again. These institutions are a good reminder that despite disaster and strife, some things always remain constant.

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For Climate Researchers, Uncertainty Crisis Looms Large

by Leo Holton & Tali Pukier

Over the past several years, climate activism has evolved into a globalized movement. As the effects of climate change become apparent through extreme weather and rising sea levels, mass mobilization has sparked city-wide marches, local protests, and international discussion. Many activists criticize political leaders over their inability to enact change.

The 2021 Glasgow Climate Summit (COP26) showcased leaders’ hesitancy to commit to strong emission-reduction measures. Given increasing urgency for the international community to switch from non-binding pledges to actual implementation, COP26 left many activists feeling disheartened by the insufficient progress that was made.

The Bull & Bear spoke to climate researchers and activists at McGill about this pivotal moment, barriers they’ve faced in their work, and where to go from here.

McGill physics professor Shaun Lovejoy has developed a new form of climate modeling to address the field’s uncertainty crisis. He sat down with the Bull & Bear to discuss issues with current modeling paradigms and the potential for his model to transform climate science.

A collection of dominant climate models have long projected the global average temperature rising between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius during the 21st century, largely due to human carbon dioxide emissions. Despite trillion-fold increases in computer processing speeds, this three degree range has been consistent in climate science discourse for over 40 years.

The reason for the uncertainty, Lovejoy explained, is that each team of human developers provides their computers with slightly different physical principles for small-scale weather;

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despite general physical laws, there is no absolute standard for how small pockets of air interact. When incredibly powerful computers start with slightly different information, their predictions often diverge dramatically.

According to Lovejoy, modeling uncertainty has enabled inadequate policymaking. A 1.5 degree and 4.5 degree change would mean very different things for the Earth: “The average temperature of the Earth in the last ice age (2000 years ago) was two degrees less than it is today,” Lovejoy stated. “I’ve been claiming that there is a looming uncertainty crisis, because the spread in the projections are too big.”

Politicians can cherry-pick projections at the low end of the range to argue against lowering emissions. Even when leaders pursue emissions reduction, projection uncertainty manifests in a lack of policy specificity and urgency.

Most dominant climate models use weather forecasting to predict every possible temperature variation in a region every few hours until a set date, say 2050 or 2100, then average those units out. Lovejoy’s model takes a different approach: “In physics there’s the big question of separating the relevant and irrelevant details of something. I want a theory that will not waste its time on irrelevant details,” he stated.

His model starts with resolution units of about one month over 100 square kilometers, ignoring interactions at the micro-level that lead to wide divergence for other models.

He then applies two key physical principles, conservation of energy and scaling, to predict changes over time.

Lovejoy’s model is facing funding barriers.

Although Lovejoy believes his work has the potential to increase the reliability and usefulness of climate modeling, the

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Canadian government has shifted most of their funding efforts to prevention. Meanwhile, most climate modelers are pushing for increased complexity, whether through stronger supercomputers or new AI approaches. Lovejoy contends that such expensive approaches will likely do little to fix the uncertainty crisis.

The News team spoke to Lovejoy and Divest McGill about what role climate science still has in climate change action.

Lovejoy expressed discontent at the Canadian government’s response to the uncertainty crisis: “Many science issues require attention, and it’s scandalous there is no funding for climate science.”

Divest McGill organizers have been approaching the climate crisis from a different angle, often using direct action. Divest is a SSMU-associated political campaign founded in 2012. The campaign works towards three main goals: pressuring McGill to divest its $50 million currently in the fossil fuel industry, engaging in solidarity with communities most affected by the fossil fuel industry, and mobilizing the McGill community around environmental issues as a whole. Other universities, including Harvard, University of Toronto, and University of British Columbia, have announced divestment plans. Divest McGill urges the McGill Board of Governors to listen to their student body and do the same.

Divest McGill held a more disillusioned view of climate science as an institution. “Climate science is not working because it appeals to educated masses, assuming people can understand the science,” one representative said.

The struggle towards fossil fuel divestment at McGill has been highly publicized. The Board of Governors voted down divestment proposals in 2013, 2016, and 2019, despite support for divestment from every elected student group at McGill.

Divest representatives cite ties between Board chair Maryse Bertrand and fossil fuel industry interests as one reason they have met so much resistance.

Divest has also faced challenges getting McGill students actively involved in their movement. The high course workload at McGill makes time-consuming activism a tougher sell to students. However, Divest stresses that their challenging work is also extremely rewarding and revitalizing.

They also noted that climate projections often present climate change as something that is coming, not yet here: “We need to advocate for those who have already been experiencing the effects of climate change for some time.”

Divest hopes to enable a paradigm shift; one that focuses less on distant futures and individual footprints and more on large corporations and the ability to affect change when the right people are in power.

Lovejoy and Divest McGill channel their passion for ensuring future climate security into different endeavors. Representing climate research and climate activism respectively, they’ve developed divergent skill sets and communication methods. Yet, all interviewees stressed the need for open communication between researchers, activists, and legislators.

While they may disagree about the best way to harness limited resources in the fight against climate change, their underlying message is the same: something must be done soon, and there is space in the discussion for all those hoping to make a difference.

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StudentApproved, Once in a Lifetime Courses

by Emilia Dominguez

We’ve all seen the lists of bird courses at McGill. We’re also familiar with the plethora of dreaded, grueling classes that you should never take. But, aside from the occasional Reddit post, we don’t hear too much about the classes that have dramatically changed students’ perspectives or filled significant gaps in their learning.

Here are a few.

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Anthropology Incorporates Indigenous Perspectives The lack of attention to Indigenous resources and issues at McGill is reflected in sparse course offerings and programs.

Some new courses are slowly being introduced, thanks to significant efforts by the Indigenous community.

ANTH338 Indigenous Studies of Anthropology is one of these courses which, as Ines Amigorena, a U1 Arts student describes, “criticized the discipline, showing how it could be improved and how it’s rooted in colonialism and racist thought.”

From the beginning, Amigorena recounted that Professor Sabiston, who is Métis of Red River, declared to the class that they didn’t have to stay if they were here for a standard anthropology class. Rather, students were told that they were all to reflect and go “back to the subject of the study, rather than the observers.”

In this discussion-based class, Professor Sabiston presented a subject and encouraged students to share their own opinions, saying, “[This is] a learning experience that bonds all of us.” Amigorena explained how the assignments were often reflections on texts that prompted students to question why they had taken the class and challenge their prejudices.

Whereas traditional academia tends to favour rationality, ANTH338 encourages being in touch with one’s own emotions.

The professor explained to them that something academia “fails to consider so much, especially when studying Indigenous peoples, is love and hurt and emotion.” This extended to Professor Sabiston’s relationship with the TA, another Indigenous man, as they were very open with each other about their experiences and gratitude “letting [the class] be part of this emotional process,” in Amigorena’s words.

STEM Courses Filling Ethical Gaps STEM fields also suffer from certain systemic inequalities and ethical dilemmas. Some McGill courses specifically target the areas that tend to fall between the cracks.

Hannah Waldman, a U2 Biology major, cited SOCI 309 Health and Illness and BIOL 306 Neural Basis of Behaviour as courses that address often disregarded historical health inequalities.

SOCI 309 emphasizes that society is “inherently connected to our health outcomes through biological pathways,” according to Waldman. The course exposes systemic racism in the field, noting how things like socioeconomic and racial status can be reflected in physical and mental health. Waldman notes that these ideas are “crucial to understand how [biology] connects to everyone in society and can explain how inequality is manifested in our bodies.”

The course includes lectures on eugenics and forced sterilization of racialized women, which Waldman acknowledged “can often get brushed under the rug.” She notes that this may have been the first time that some students were hearing about these realities.

Indeed, many STEM classes openly acknowledge the potential destructiveness within their own material. Katie Young, a fourth year software engineering student, explains how ECSE 557 Introduction to Ethics of Intelligent Systems made her “a

bit more wary and less trusting of technology.” Young “didn’t really realize the importance of including ethics at every step of the way when you’re writing code and especially the machine-learning algorithm [because] that’s going to be making decisions about somebody’s life and livelihood.”

Like Waldman, Young found the unique class structure to be an aid to her learning. In this small class, there was structured time for group activities or discussions where the professor encouraged students to share their opinions: “people [have] the space to actually think critically, rather than just listen and then intake.”

In the process of building certain tools or machines, “it’s so important to understand the role you play as a developer to ensure that it is to the standard, ethics-wise,” explains Young.

In fact, she believes that developers “owe it to the people who can’t possibly understand what the machine-learning algorithm is doing to make sure that it’s treating them fairly.”

Similar to Waldman, Young found that her favorite class pointed out “a gap in what we were learning.” Because ethics “applies to everything we do,” she asserted that “it should be part of every curriculum.”

Games in Political Science Faced with a curriculum full of long, dense readings, political science students may find that the practical learning aspect of the discipline is lacking. That is where classes like POLI 452 Conflict Simulation come in.

This “dynamic” class provides “a very practical way” to consider political problems according to Victoria Aponte, a 3rd year political science major.

The participation grade in POLI 452 is based on playing different war games. In these games, everyone plays different actors, where your allies may have different or conflicting goals according to Nameera Armin, a U3 Political Science major.

For the final project, students must come up with a fullydeveloped war game themselves.“When you play war games, you’re actually embodying someone else,” expressed Aponte.

“You’re invested in it [and] you’re not looking at it from so far away.”

Armin explained how her group is doing a project on resource management based on the Tragedy of the Commons, “where different towns have to decide between economic development and polluting the local shared lake.”

Meanwhile, Aponte’s team created a board game that replicated the journey that migrants undertook crossing the border from Mexico to the United States. They drew out the exact path taken while considering real-life dynamics, allowing students to consider the different impacts for migrants and how limited their choices really are.

Aponte called for more political science courses that include these war games. Armin also said that she’d like classes to incorporate similar hands-on elements, arguing that “practical knowledge is just as important.” and that “we don’t really get much [of this] in university courses.”

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ARTS & CULTURE

NUIT BLANCHE 2022 ILLUMINATES LOCAL ART AND CULTURE

by Olivia Whetstone & Hannah Wallace

The Bright Night

by Olivia

In the dead of winter, bundling up and facing Montreal’s cold climate is often the last thing we feel like doing. On February 26th, Montreal’s Nuit Blanche festival forced Montrealers to put on their coziest toques and set their studies aside for a city-wide party that lasted all night—yes, all night.

Part of the larger ten-day Montreal en Lumiere event that runs for ten days at the end of the February, Nuit Blanche provides unique opportunities to celebrate the city’s local art and culture scene. Events range from art exhibitions, figure skating demos, a drag brunch, and an impressive rock climb in the dark. For those who are still hesitant, indoor events and elaborate light displays projected onto nearby buildings make Nuit Blanche enjoyable from anywhere in the city.

Celebrated in over 120 cities worldwide, Nuit Blanche marks a night of festivity for many cultures. The festival as we know it dates back to Paris in 2002, during which museums stayed open all night and art installations appeared around the city, transforming it into a unique celebration of local culture. The Nuit Blanche—or “White Night”—phenomenon then spread to other cities, including Montreal in 2003, where it became an anticipated lively event during one of the city’s darkest months.

What makes Nuit Blanche so crucial for Montreal’s art and culture scene is the way it makes local art and culture available to everyone. For many, visiting art galleries and museums is 14

an inaccessible and exclusive experience tied to elitism and social inequality. However, as the majority of Nuit Blanche’s programming is free and takes place all over the city, you may have even already stumbled upon film screenings or art installations from diverse artists by chance. For one sleepless night, the festival brings culture into the streets and into galleries completely free of charge. The financially-friendly festival provides a casual way to engage with local art and culture, allowing it to reach new audiences who might have been excluded from this scene before.

Transforming Montreal into an ultra-vibrant party for one night also allows Montrealers to experience the city in ways they may not have in the past. When was the last time you got to rock climb in the dark or enjoy an immersive audio experience about Quebec hip hop? A return to in-person festivities after last year’s online rendition, Nuit Blanche 2022 also marks a much-needed comeback to engaging with art and culture in person and a reintroduction to Montreal and its inhabitants. This is especially significant for local artists because the closures of theatres and live performances have resulted in an industry-wide economic hit. As Montrealers come together to celebrate these talented artists, Nuit Blanche fosters a much-needed sense of community as we slowly begin to recover.

Nuit Blanche truly reminds us of Montreal’s beauty during a time when the climate is at its coldest and darkest. As the festival brings us together to celebrate local culture, Nuit Blanche is a rare event to look forward to, and it is one that encourages us to get to know Montreal and Montrealers better.

ARTS & CULTURE

The Afterglow

by Hannah

I wake up the morning after Nuit Blanche with bleary eyes and a foggy memory of the night before. I open my phone to find a series of jumbled voice memos and incoherent poems on my Instagram story accompanied by a chaotic audio-visual experience, and a sentence on my notes app that reads “Alice in Wonderland meets Percy Jackson meets Dante’s Inferno meets No Exit.” As one of my voice memos so aptly put it, Nuit Blanche is a night for making memories that you’ll never remember.

This event had come at exactly the right time for me in my life, and it acted as an incredibly cathartic way to purge the anxieties that had been accumulating over the past two months. My reading week was going to be filled with stressful library visits and dry classics, but for one night I was able to stop thinking about everything I wasn’t doing and just think about what I was doing. Typically, the idea of going out past nine o’clock and trekking through slushy, crowded Montreal streets is my idea of hell, but this evening proved to be a much needed respite from reality.

Every moment that night felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience where I was entering a whole different plane of existence. Every person that I crossed paths with felt like a main character in a postmodern novel. As I watched people looking at large glowing orbs in the snow, I thought: these are the nights that people write artsy, romantic movies about.

While I indeed spent a considerable amount of time looking at art exhibits, the most impactful moments of artistic beauty

came at the most unexpected times. Among a luminescent sea of trees, there was a trio being filmed as they pretended to converse and laugh. Later, I turned a corner of an art exhibit expecting another painting, but instead I found an elderly man eating lentil soup. At that moment I understood how art and the city can exist side by side.

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by narratives. The fictional narratives that we surround ourselves with to feel less alone, the narratives that we create about ourselves to feel more understood, and the narratives of every stranger, friend, or foe that I’ve passed by in my lifetime.

I look at the man behind the deep fryer making my poutine and I wonder what his favourite flower is. A woman scowls at me as I accidentally run into her, I wonder what caused her eyebrows to become permanently furrowed. Every person that I cross has their own intricately woven narrative, and it feels nice to be reminded that everyone is battling mundane obstacles every day.

In this day and age, it can be difficult to find experiences that haven’t been commodified. While there were obviously vendors taking advantage of the large crowds, this experience was a rare instance where capitalism didn’t feel like the forefront of our lives. Perhaps it’s just the idealist in me, but Nuit Blanche 2022 felt like one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments that transcended the confines of reality. A core memory that all future memories will be compared to.

The next day, I walk past Place Des Arts, and a sense of tranquility overcomes me. It’s back to the real world where the afternoon will be spent working on this very article, but at least I have the memories of that night to guide me through this chaotic life.

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ARTS & CULTURE

‘Voices from the Footnotes’ Podcast Unsilences the Past

by Hannah Murray

What does it mean to live through history?

This question lingers in the back of my mind, ebbing back and forth in my thoughts– maybe in part because I am a history major here at McGill.

History and our understanding of it are constantly in flux. It is difficult to get accustomed to the fact that we live in an unpredictable world built from an unpredictable past. History doesn’t stop, nor do people’s narratives, and this can lead to some pretty miraculous discoveries. Narrative serves as the foundation of its complex structure, as it can be unpredictable, fluid in nature, and even unreliable at times. It is what keeps us engaged with our past, providing a crucial link between the abstract events of the past and the personal connections we maintain in the present. However, not all narratives are treated equally. Some even appear to disappear completely from our sight as time goes on.

In 2016, the McGill library established ROAAr (Rare Books & Special Collections, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, Visual Arts Collection, and McGill University Archives), combining four rare collection departments into one with an initiative that seeks to bring the rarities of historical collections to life. ROAAr’s podcast, Voices from the Footnotes, provides a fascinating example of how we connect with the known and unknown past through narrative.

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Voices from the Footnotes explores history at the McGill University Library and Archives through places, people, and artifacts that have long remained hidden behind the mainstream historical narrative. This podcast provides an opportunity for stories that have been previously silenced to become heard in the present. As Haitian-American academic and anthropologist MichelRolph Trouillot states in his book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, “the ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.” Voices from the Footnotes unearths the roots of the McGill and Montreal we know today, consequently unsilencing the past and the narratives within it Voices from the Footnotes consists of fifteen podcast episodes, detailing hidden histories and narratives of McGill and Montreal. In particular, their twopart episode, “Generations,” provides a captivating story about the lives of five generations of Black students and staff at McGill,extending from the 1940s to the present day. Presenting the experiences of McGill’s first Black Carnival Queen, Beryl Dickinson-Dash (now Beryl Rapier) and two father-daughter duos– Ron and Brittany Williams, and Glyne and Adrienne Piggot– “Generations” connects the past to the present, exploring each interviewee’s unique experiences and challenges at McGill and in Montreal while simultaneously linking their stories into a broader historical narrative.

As humans, we all have a narrative that follows and recounts the memorable moments of our lives. “Generations” exemplifies the power of personal

ARTS & CULTURE

narrative, as well as its potential to overlap and interconnect with those around us. Although the five interviewees of “Generations” narrate their unique personal histories in vastly different ways, some commonalities arise to connect their stories. Memories of space, home, and community play a significant role for each interviewee, linking material objects with abstract associations.

As interviewer and host of the podcast, Sheetal Lodhia notes “the idea of feeling at home in a space, or feeling safe in a space, will come up repeatedly with our interviewees. And some of what we will hear is hopeful. However, some of what we will hear is sobering.” Spaces around Montreal have the power to evoke a vast array of sentiments depending on who you ask. Physical objects have an uncanny ability to grasp onto our memories, often allowing them to resurface only when we least expect it.

Space, objects, and, both personal and collective memory play an important role in narrative and the way it unfolds. As “Generations” demonstrates, narrative has the ability to evolve alongside time and space.

The five interviewees of “Generations” reveal the fluidity of historical narratives as they reflect on their experiences at McGill and in Montreal. Beryl DickinsonDash illuminates the ways in which McGill and Montreal have both changed and remained the same since growing up here. Additionally, Glyne Piggot explores the experience of moving here to become a member of the McGill faculty.

Their stories highlight the ongoing relationship between the present and the past, demonstrating simultaneously that progress has been made and what

needs to continue to ensure progress for Black students at McGill.

Adrienne Piggot and Ron Williams speak for a more recent generation of Black students and staff who continue to hold ties to the university and the city. A recent graduate from McGill’s faculty of law, Brittany Williams, voices her experiences at McGill in a contemporary context. The interconnected yet unique narratives of these five interviewees present a captivating depiction that calls on the past, present, and future. Their stories live on through history.

After listening to “Generations,” my question from earlier now basks on the shores of the forefront of my mind: what does it mean to live through history? At times, history seems to impose itself as an abstract chimera, taking on a form too complex and fluid to understand.

How do we make sense of something that is constantly in flux?

As I continue to go about my studies in history, one of my key takeaways has been this: look for the silences and missing voices in the historical narrative you are presented with. Reading sources that go ‘against the grain’ and looking for the obscured details in all narratives is the best way to learn more about the past, and to contribute to its evolution. The narratives presented in “Generations” epitomize what it means to live through history, unearthing concealed roots of the historical tree that makes up Montreal and McGill. If history is a tree, then narrative is the structure of bark and branches that come together to form it––representing past, current, and future growth.

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, Z n e G r a e D Don’t Digitize the Thri ft Store

by Jacob Sponga

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Boutique Lau. B 4302 boul. Saint-Laurent

ARTS & CULTURE

Every day, Generation Z—colloquially known as Zoomers—are part of an increasingly virtual world: Facebook’s recent brand change to Meta being a prime example. When looking at the onslaught of hyper-tech, like the new NFT scramble, coupled with pandemic isolation, it’s no wonder vinyl is making a comeback amongst young people.

Zoomers are now seeking to swap out the visual for the hands-on.

The retro-crazed Zoomers at McGill need look no further than Milton-Parc for a taste of the old. The Word bookstore at 469 Rue Milton is a time warp back into a bygone age, one long before hopeless “what is the blockchain” search queries and hapless breakout rooms. In fact, The Word significantly predates the internet age, before even the release of VHS in fact. The shop, housed in a former stable dating back to 1835, is as anachronistic as they come. The Word’s website gloats the absence of computers and electronic cash registers from their store, and that “all calls are still made on a rotary phone.” The one-room store’s shelves are bursting with poetry, philosophy, classics, and much more…all second-hand. A philosophy of wornness seems to seep out from the brickwork and into the street.

Here stands a last bastion of midcentury analog quintessence, a genuine hole-in-the-wall oozing with spirit, seemingly spared by a modern design tsunami of Corporate Memphis and minimalist logos. In fact, The Word doesn’t even have a sign posted outside the building. It has a window, though, and undoubtedly many passersby are

enticed to enter by the cozy scene inside.

The Word is a testament to what many Zoomers may be looking for in their thrifted vinyl copy of Dreams: a genuine interiority manifested in familiar physical forms such as well-turned pages.

In other words, the antiquated is “in.”

But what The Word bookstore has so carefully mastered, and what we Gen Z must learn to emulate, is a fierce rejection of the technological powersthat-be. Our generation, with all our propensity for trendsetting and change, must learn how to close our doors to the forces that held us hostage for most of the 2010s. This is exemplified in our increasingly dangerous relationship with an augmented digital influence on thrift stores. Thrift shops have become seismically popular with Gen Z throughout the past few years. Fueling this rapid revival is Depop, an app that has popularized reselling. On Depop, users can mark up and sell underpriced clothing from second-hand stores as lucrative vintage items—and it has made Zoomers some serious cash. Yet our fervent engagement with Depop runs the risk of spoiling a seriously good thing—sending prices soaring by exploiting the exceptionally fair price margins many thrift stores provide. Just as the communicative potential of the internet was largely poisoned by Meta and other tech conglomerates, Zoomers are flirting with disaster in their rampant consumption of Depop and curated items.

We, Gen Z, have shown generationally that we value sustainability and display

tremendous compassion when tackling social justice issues. Now, it is crucial that we seal ourselves off and disengage with what we are told is our predetermined destiny. In all the ways Generation Z has redefined consumption unwittingly, we inevitably harbor the potential to make colossal waves through conscious action and organization.

“A philosophy of wornness seems to seep out from the brickwork and into the street.”

As Noam Chomsky said: “If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.” It isn’t easy to turn down an opportunity to make a quick buck, or to disengage from what everyone else seems to be doing. A resurgence of second-hand havens like The Word is crucial, just as long as we work to fight against its commodification. Our influence is easily underestimated.

Zoomers have a serious impact wielded through our mastery of everything internet. We should use it to get offline.

Let’s not attempt to buy back culture.

Instead, let’s redefine it.

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BUSINESS & TECH

Investment Banking Is Not the Coolest Job on Wall Street Anymore... and for Students, That’s a Good Thing

by Sean Kim & Julian Robinson

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BUSINESS & TECH

For decades, finance students have been keen to join investment banks after graduation, desiring thrilling, high-paying careers with amazing opportunities. Considering the longstanding, highly competitive recruiting process for investment banking, young students should know that the sands are shifting and that a career as an investment banker is within reach more than ever.

The biggest allures of investment banking are the astronomical salaries and bonuses that bankers make through lucrative client deals. On top of this, there is no shortage of money to go around, because the modern world needs banking institutions to remain operational, at risk of a complete meltdown of the global economy.

Much of the current change has to do with the attitude of senior bankers. While their pay is amazing, the trade-off is a complete lack of work-life balance. In 2021, the average hours worked per week for first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs was 105 hours, and the 70-80 hours per week were considered the bare minimum. Fresh out of university with a mountain of student debt, it is easy to choose the money once you get an offer. However, even junior bankers are beginning to burn out in their second years, as the sheer amount of work forces them to re-evaluate whether they want to remain in banking for the longrun.

Senior bankers are now looking elsewhere for jobs that can provide a better work-life balance, and the mass influx of money into the markets has provided them with many alternatives.

Some examples include private equity firms, pension funds, and even personal advising. Following these paths, bankers not only have more time to themselves, but also have more freedom to pursue interesting investing strategies that would be unavailable at large banks.

As more and more investment bankers choose to leave the profession for greener pastures, there are not enough junior bankers to promote into senior positions, and the amount of work that needs to be done is more than what the current supply of bankers can handle.

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BUSINESS & TECH

Students have benefited from this vacuum of banking positions, as large banking firms have become more and more desperate to take on junior analysts. Goldman Sachs has raised the base pay for junior bankers to $110 000 as banks compete to take on young talent.

Some banks are even removing the requirement for experience completely, which demonstrates just how much they are willing to concede to meet their current work quotas.

The career outlook for young people today is radically different from the past. While the previous generation emphasized the importance of job stability, often staying in the same job until retirement, the young people of today consider the jobs that they currently have and their careers as two different things. They may bounce between jobs across their industries, or hop industries entirely at some point. For the past few decades, banking was one

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of those professions that was always considered static, but with an increasing list of financial products and services, many bankers have become open to exploring these new opportunities, which has also contributed to the job availability for students.

“Fresh out of university with a mountain of student debt, it is easy to choose the money once you get an offer. “ This newfound availability of jobs in investment banking has provided many students with a more hopeful outlook of their lives post-graduation. Of course, this does not change the fact that entrylevel jobs demand an extreme number of hours, nor the fact that many bankers look for alternative opportunities once they reach the five -year mark.

Nonetheless, finance students now have a greater number of opportunities to get their foot in the door.

On a personal level, pursuing an entrylevel job in investment banking can seem daunting . The amount of preparation and knowledge required to even land an internship is often immense, and the process grueling. This is especially true given that firms often hire out of penultimate summer internship programs that can recruit up to a year in advance. Such internships are incredibly competitive, with applicants often going through three or more rounds of interviews before obtaining an offer.

Even once an offer is received, students are only invited to return to the firm after proving themselves throughout the duration of their internship. Positions at leading banks often require prior finance internships, as well as internships in fields such as asset management or private equity. Many of these intermediary

BUSINESS & TECH

internships, which are only one step on the path towards investment banking, are nearly as competitive as investment banking positions themselves.

Additionally, recruitment for finance internships generally requires a great deal of preparation in advance of applications opening. Networking plays a massive role, meaning that one must prove themself to junior members of their desired firm months prior to receiving an interview. Interview-vital firm and industry knowledge must be researched thoroughly, and this process often occurs while students are still in the middle of their semesters.

Finally, to be successful in pursuing such competitive internships and careers, students are required to have a vast repertoire of industry knowledge and impeccable technical skills, which are put to the test throughout the interview process. Students typically prepare for

these interviews with the same vigor as for their final exams, practicing for hours from complex online guides.

As a result, a student interested in “high finance” (investment banking, private equity, etc.) typically needs to know that they want to pursue such a career and begin preparing shortly after coming to university. This paints a grim picture for potentially interested students, for whom an uphill battle must be fought and sacrifices of free time must be made.

Despite these obstacles, there has never been a better time to be pursuing a career in finance, specifically investment banking. Again, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, young bankers have been leaving their firms at record rates. The pandemic has not only made the job of investment banking more dry due to working from home, but market activity picked up greatly in 2020, and

has yet to come back down. As a result, there is massive demand by banks for young talent, but little supply. Some are calling this the “war for talent.”

“As a young student toying with the idea of a career in investment banking, this means that highly desirable firms are waging a war over you.”

As a young student toying with the idea of a career in investment banking, this means that highly desirable firms are waging a war over you. Young professionals form the backbone of the investment banking world. In a more financialized world, where firms are having trouble retaining talent, there will only be more and more positions available at the top financial institutions in the near future.

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BUSINESS & TECH

How McGill Alumnus Peyush Bansal Gave India a Vision

by Arjun Seth

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BUSINESS & TECH

India, a country one-third the size of Canada, has a population of 1.5 billion that is growing at double the rate of the country’s job market. As young people enter the job market after graduation, they either remain unemployed or are forced to take jobs that do not employ their skills and abilities. Given the situation, the country’s privileged few often relocate to countries like Canada that promise them a stable livelihood through their various immigration programs. One amongst these few was Peyush Bansal, a young boy from Delhi who enrolled at McGill’s Faculty of Engineering in 2002. What made Bansal’s journey so unique was his determination to use his education to transform the lives of the other, less privileged half of India’s population, rather than as a pathway to immigrate into Canada.

Soon after graduating from McGill in 2006, Bansal landed a job at Microsoft’s Redmond Campus in Seattle. At Microsoft, he described himself as being just “one in fifty-thousand,” surrounded by employees working towards improving the lives of people whose lives were already relatively better off. Bansal felt as if his experiences had taught him to improve the lives of those in need.

One such need he identified was vision correction. According to him, 50 percent of the Indian population needed spectacles. Out of these 750 million people, only 187 million had spectacles.

To put this in terms of economic product, the global economy faces an estimated annual loss of $227 billion USD due to the productivity loss caused by uncorrected vision. This dire need for vision correction motivated him to return to India and found Lenskart, an online prescription eyewear company, in 2014.

Prior to Lenskart’s launch, India’s eyewear market was largely unorganized, with only a few brands. The buying process for a customer was extremely cumbersome, as it took up to two weeks from the date of prescription for the customer to receive a pair of glasses.

Moreover, the cheapest pair of branded glasses cost at least $30, whereas the average hourly wage in India is a mere $1.50 USD, making them unaffordable for most of the population. Some of these brands, however, such as Warby Parker and Luxottica, had low costs and

profit margins of up to $69 and $166 respectively, according to a UCLA study.

With these low costs and high margins, companies aimed to leverage the inelastic demand for spectacles. In other words, eyewear companies knew that their customers, regardless of their job or pay rate, would shell out any amount to correct their own vision or their family members’.

“What made Bansal’s journey unique was his determination to use his education to transform the lives of the other, less privileged half of India’s population, rather than as a pathway to immigrate into Canada.”

After witnessing brands leverage this customer pain point, Bansal envisioned a massive business opportunity. When he launched Lenskart, he significantly cut down profit margins and sold pairs of spectacles for prices as low as $4 USD. Apart from price penetration, Bansal cut down the delivery time of spectacles to 3 days from the average 14-day wait.

Lastly, by offering over 5,000 varieties of frames, he tried to position Lenskart as a fashionable lifestyle brand.This lifestyle marketing was aimed at reducing hesitation for Indian consumers, who often stigmatized the use of glasses because they were medically prescribed products.

Over the years, however, Lenskart faced multiple problems. Its main issue was a paradox of choosing to launch primarily as an online business while simultaneously trying to increase access to eyewear products in India. 65% of the Indian population lived in semiurban or rural areas with limited access to the internet and with customers reluctant to shop online. As a result, Lenskart had a difficult time reaching a majority of Indian consumers through its e-commerce model.

To circumvent this problem, Bansal adopted the “endless-aisle” strategy and opened physical stores in smaller

Indian cities in 2014. With this strategy, a customer could walk into the store, get their power checked, choose their frame, and have the store manager place their order through Lenskart’s online portal.

Consequently, while the physical store provided tangible benefits such as the possibility to touch and try the product, the order was still being fulfilled by the company’s conventional e-commerce supply chain.

Due to this omnichannel model, Lenskart stores only ordered products when customers expressed interest through the physical store’s portal. As a result, the stores did not accumulate deadstock, and Lenskart was able to avoid unnecessary storage costs. Additionally, unlike other local opticians, Lenskart manufactured its own frames rather than ordering them from other brands, giving them even more control over costs. These low costs enabled Lenskart to give commissions as high as 2530% to franchise owners who operated its stores. This attractive commission incentivized local opticians to convert their stores into Lenskart franchises.

Consequently, Bansal’s brand was able to pave its way into smaller, less developed markets in India in an ethical and inclusive manner that gave local opticians an alternative business opportunity rather than completely eliminating them.

Over time, Bansal’s choice to launch as an e-commerce platform has paid off.

With the endless-aisle strategy and the growing acceptance of e-commerce in rural India, Lenskart has gained an edge over its competitors in India. In the 201920 fiscal year, the company’s revenue grew by almost 100% in comparison to its closest competitor, Titan, proving Lenskart’s growing prominence in the Indian eyewear market.

Today, Lenskart has a value of over $2.5 billion USD. In its 12 years of existence, the company has, both literally and figuratively, provided many individuals and businesses in India with a vision.

Bansal’s mission also seems to have come full circle– from pitching his vision correction business to investors at SoftBank to hosting as an investor on the reality show Shark Tank India, where he is supporting numerous other start-up visions.

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BUSINESS & TECH

The Future is Nu-Clearer

by Collin Wang There is a running joke in the scientific community that nuclear fusion is perpetually thirty years away from being viable.

Due to the input requirement and technical complexity, a complete solution to this challenge has eluded researchers since its theoretical conception in the early 1930s. However, in recording the highest-ever sustained reading from a fusion reactor on February 9th, the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Oxfordshire has renewed the belief that we are closer than ever before to a fusion-powered world.

In the broadest possible strokes, nuclear fusion begins with the formation of hydrogen plasma through intense heat and pressure. During this process, the positively-charged nuclei of the hydrogen particles overcome their mutual repulsion to form unstable helium particles, triggering beta decay that forms a stable helium product. This process releases a substantial amount of thermal energy that is in turn used to heat water into steam; this rotates the turbines that power the electric generators.

This process is based on the same forces that have kept stars ignited for billions of years. Deep inside the core of a star, immense gravitational force generates the pressure necessary for the fusion process to occur. Here on Earth, the same magnitude of pressure is unattainable, but we can compensate with even higher temperatures. Generators have internal temperatures in excess of 150 million degrees Celsius and contain the resulting plasma using either powerful magnetic fields or lasers. The aforementioned JET facility that achieved the most recent breakthrough uses the magnetic confinement method through a device called a 26

“tokamak,” which resembles a giant metal donut.

The primary roadblock over the history of fusion reactor experimentation is one of efficiency: the amount of power generated has never even come close to exceeding the amount expended. The closest scientists have come to breaking even was in 1997, when the same tokamak machine produced 21.7 megajoules in a four-second, continuous pulse. On February 9th, JET’s tokamak more than doubled that historical figure, producing 59 megajoules over 5 seconds. While this figure averages out to only 11 megawatts of power (just enough to boil half-a-dozen kettles of water), it is a huge incremental step that promises even more under the assumption of scalability.

The highly anticipated sequel to this experiment is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is currently under construction in Provence, France.

The reactor at ITER is of the same ilk as its predecessor at JET, but ten times the size and more sophisticated in its use of superconducting magnets, in lieu of copper ones. The new facility is set to begin testing in 2025 and is earmarked to be the next major milestone on the path towards commercially available fusion energy.

The rush towards net-energy fusion technology is not limited to government players and academic research bodies.

In the private sector, the ESG movement will be a major tailwind for investment, as investors and consumers alike disproportionately reward companies that demonstrate

BUSINESS & TECH

strong corporate responsibility. A clear indicator of these incentives materialized at the 2021COP26 conference, as the aggregate value of firms committed to attaining a net-zero economy reached $130 trillion. The realignment of corporate profit incentives with broader environmental interests means market-led initiatives will meaningfully supplement their public sector counterparts in achieving global decarbonization goals. Since nuclear fusion would be the ideal tool to achieve these ends, funding will not be in short supply.

Last December, fusion energy startups were buoyed by a wave of private capital placements with homegrown Canadian firm General Fusion closing a $130 million round in the same week that Commonwealth Fusion Systems LLC raised $1.8 billion from a consortium of prolific backers, including Bill Gates. A healthy pool of continuous financing will be crucial in order to overcome the enormous feasibility barrier and to facilitate a competitive development process that ensures the technology is both cost-effective and accessible.

The notion of constructing a synthetic star to power our cities seems celestial in its assumptions, yet the technology would have massive benefits. Currently, nuclear fission accounts for roughly 10% of global energy generation. However, the fission process — which relies on the energy released by splitting nuclei — produces harmful by-products, is prone to meltdown, and runs on less abundant substances such as Uranium and Plutonium.

Conversely, the input materials (hydrogen) for fusion reactions are readily available and, while the commonly used hydrogen isotope Tritium is moderately radioactive, it is not toxic nor nearly as long-lived as fission byproducts.

Furthermore, a fusion power plant does not pose the same “meltdown risk” that has tarnished the public reputation of nuclear fission. This is because the fission process contains an unstable chain reaction, while fusion reactors require active external containment to proceed. Therefore, any interruption of the tokamak would result in the plasma cooling, and the fusion harmlessly ending.

Furthermore, while certain green energy projects have hidden environmental footprints, fusion energy would have no direct impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Another selling point is the raw efficiency superiority. According to the UK Atomic Energy Authority, one kilogram of fusion fuel would generate an amount of energy equivalent to the burning of 10 million kilograms of fossil fuels. To put this into perspective, the average Canadian household could satisfy its power needs for an entire year using a fuel pellet capable of fitting into one’s pocket.

At the end of the day, the hard-fought accomplishment at JET is only one brick in the greater nuclear fusion road that is still several decades away from completion. Nonetheless, the limitless upside of ubiquitous clean energy makes every development monumental. Nuclear fusion is truly the holy grail of energy. Now, it is up to us to forge a path to obtain it.

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OPINION

This year, the opinion editors explore what lies underneath the blue moon –– isolation, death, and spirituality. How can we evaluate our changing relationship with religion during the pandemic?

Alia

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been taught that humanity has roots in tragedy. And consequently, I have been taught about the tools humanity has surrounded itself with to mitigate tragedy. Religion, a principal tool, was never discussed in my childhood home.

My mother grew up Christian while my father grew up Muslim, but neither felt a strong enough connection to their respective upbringings to impose their faith onto their children. I strayed away from the formalities because I was taught how discriminatory and oppressive religion could be from my parents. However, the abstract concept of faith continued to intrigue me. Faith in my young eyes was seemingly a cure-all –– a solution to doubts, an explanation for injustice, a reason for persistence, and most of all a haven from tragedy.

SPIRITUALITY AND SICKNESS:

RELIGION POSTPANDEMIC

by Alia Shaukat & Sarah Sylvester 28

Everyone has experienced tragedy in some form. Tragedy is an indescribable, metamorphosing thing that can range in severity or proximity or duration. Even if you didn’t lose someone close to you from COVID-19, the pandemic brought tragedy on all of us like we have never seen before, and, consequently, we were all forced to swallow an insurmountable dose of hurt. Death was consistently at the forefront of our minds, whether we were worrying about at-risk family members, our friends, and even friends of friends. For the first time in many of our lives, death approached us at an incomparable rate, to the point where it often felt suffocating. Our direct confrontations with death also changed, as people were unable to cope with their grief in funerals or other community based rituals and so were forced to grieve alone.

In the modern age, there has been a trend of disillusionment towards religion.

According to a 2019 survey by the Pew

OPINION

Research Center, the number of adults who consider themselves non-religious has been steadily growing. With the pandemic, there has been a significant shift in that trend. Religious attendance is increasing for the first time in decades.

When separated from our usual support systems, we are forced to turn inwards, and reflect on our own spiritual responses to death and tragedy for comfort.

I have many reservations about the forms that modern religion takes. My parents made an active choice in raising me without religion because they had seen firsthand how religion can be used to hurt people. In many cases, religion is a discriminatory force rather than an inclusive one. Specifically in the COVID-19 pandemic, conservative religious populations were some of the greatest opposition to both vaccination efforts and public health mandates generally.

According to the Pew Research Center, about 45% of white evangelical Christian adults in the U.S. stated that they were planning to refuse the vaccine when it became available. Many religious institutions can be blamed for harmful misinformation that ultimately costs people their lives. In fact, I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic, one of the first large breakouts in my city was from a Sunday church gathering.

Most interestingly, however, this increase in religious interest has been especially characterized by non-traditional forms of religion, specifically neo-paganism.

We are surrounded by it on social media, whether it be in occult, astrological, or Wiccan practices. This uptick may be a reaction to what sociologist Max Weber describes as a “disenchantment of the world,” in which we have become so exhausted with modern tragedy that we seek a turn to our sacred roots in the natural world.

Certainly, this renewed interest in neopaganism practices is refreshing and important, but I cannot help but feel frustrated by the double standards in the present. For as long as we’ve known, the credibility of non-Western religions has been questioned and criticized.

Marginalized peoples in colonial societies have been persecuted and killed for their practices. The current acceptance of these forms of spirituality is due solely to their appropriation by Western people who made them into a social media trend.

Despite my reservations, I feel like religion and spirituality during the COVID-19 pandemic provided us with more good

than harm. Fundamentally, they provide everything we are searching for: a way to get through. I’ve always considered myself a spiritual person, originating from that distinct feeling that even the littlest things in life often feel too big for their britches. Without this feeling, life can feel a little too bleak to navigate.

If this is what religion is, at its core and stripped of the oppressive formalities and institutions, then I don’t see much wrong in believing in something during hard times to find our way through.

Sarah

In the fall of 2020, I took a course on religion and death. I had registered for it over the summer, having always been intrigued by the concept of death and how humans grapple with it. The pandemic had been looming over us for multiple months and the death count was climbing each day. In August, my perspective on the damage was distant because I didn’t know anyone who had succumbed to the virus personally. By September, the severity of the disaster sunk in, and replaced my ignorance with the thought of dying alone in a hospital room.

In the class, we learned about how different religions conceptualize death and the associated fear. Some inserted the thought of death into daily life, acting in ways their god would approve of, to avoid the consequence of the day of judgment, or eternal damnation.

Some had a heaven, and others had a hell. Some awaited death peacefully, knowing they would be reborn into something greater. For many cultures, life could be considered death’s waiting room.

But when death finally did call you in, every religion we studied demanded that you were cared for, surrounded by the comfort of friends and family. Divine law commanded it to be such a way.

Perhaps your body would be sat with, or cleaned. We think of funerals and burials in some fashion when we think of death.

Many religions believe the deceased are transported somewhere new: an incomprehensible afterlife that we conceptualized ourselves, yet we don’t know until we’ve experienced it. The image of entering death alone is tragic for many. Now, millions of people have gone west without a hand to hold.

It is interesting to ponder how spirituality has been shaped by the pandemic.

I’ve never been a religious person, but I resonate with how scary dying solo

seems to be, especially if the dead’s send-off determines the quality of their afterlife. As I realized the number of victims of COVID-19, my reaction to dying companionless grew stronger. It occurred during this course, which led me to consider how religious formulations of death have been reshaped by the pandemic.

No matter the context, I think death is always a bit scary. But religion offers comfort; that’s why we have priests and other religious officials who can guide people through the process, even if they’re the only ones keeping the person comfortable. Many chaplains were distraught that they could not enter the room of those dying from COVID-19.

Rev. Moneka Thompson is one of these chaplains, having suited up in PPE only to be refused entry by a nurse. In a 2021 article published by Stat, a health news magazine, Moneka states: “People need touch, you just don’t imagine how much they need it… they are so isolated.”

Religious guides in hospitals throughout the nation have modified their practice to adhere to protection measures, just so they could be there for those dying alone. They’ve stood three meters away from patients, regardless of their religious affiliations, braving the virus to do what families weren’t permitted to.

It left me to wonder, “Can we introduce more spirituality into our chaplaincies?”

How can we begin to insert astrological, Wiccan, and other spiritual practices into the picture when facing the pandemic for the nonreligious? Despite the stigma that surrounds spirituality (people often find it to be silly or less ‘valid’ than other major religions) could spreading knowledge to those interested prove useful in an exceptional situation like this?

It is an intriguing idea that I’ve begun to insert into my beliefs about death.

Many sects maintain that there isn’t necessarily an individual afterlife, but rather, a collective consciousness that we are all eventually reabsorbed into.

Others believe that our ‘afterlife’ is merely returning to nature and being reborn through our nourishment of new life, like plants and fungi, which then feed animals and other living things. The list of ideas goes on, but the concept of a collective consciousness leads me to pondering death as a communal experience. In the event of being forced to die alone, these spiritual beliefs make it less daunting to me, and I am sure these ideas could offer similar comfort for others.

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OPINION

by Emma Buchta

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OPINION

“Is anyone else alarmed that billionaires are having their own private space race while record-breaking heat waves are sparking a ‘fire-breathing dragon of clouds’ and cooking sea creatures to death in their shells?” tweeted former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich on July 8, 2021.

Days later, British billionaire Richard Branson made his first flight into space aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket. Soon after, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ventured into space aboard his personal spaceship built by the private space flight company he founded, Blue Origin. Tesla’s Elon Musk is the third entrepreneurial member of the “billionaire rocketeers” with his company S ​ paceX. He joins Branson and Bezos in the quest to pioneer the private space industry, which endeavors to carry humans into space––and possibly to the moon and Mars.

“It is unsettling to realize that billionaires who have the resources to battle climate change might instead abandon ship with private escape pods.”

Although the advent of space tourism may sound exciting and innovative for the scientific community, a race among billionaires should be a race to save the planet, not to leave it. It is clear that climate change has caused irreversible damage to the Earth and its ecosystems, significantly threatening the future of the planet. This damage will only be exacerbated in the oncoming decades. Prominent individuals like Prince William have argued that those who have the privilege of being educated and affluent also have a crucial responsibility in developing solutions to repair Earth, rather than seeking the next habitable planet.

Concerningly, Bezos described his inaugural space flight in July as part of building a path to space “so that our kids and their kids can build a future.” It is unsettling to realize that billionaires who have the resources to battle climate change might instead abandon Earth with private escape pods.

Popular media is similarly concerned with this idea, as seen in the recently released Netflix film Don’t Look Up, a satirical commentary that reflects real anxiety about the more fortunate abandoning the planet during a climate disaster.

Furthermore, the burgeoning private space industry comes at vast environmental costs. Rockets require exorbitant amounts of fuel that emit chemicals into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, water, and chlorine. One rocket launch alone released 200-300 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—and there were 114 attempted orbital launches in 2020, according to NASA. Unlike airplanes, rockets emit chemicals into the upper atmosphere where particles remain for 2-3 years. Even seemingly harmless substances like water

can contribute to global warming. According to senior policy advisor at the New Zealand Space Agency, Jessica Dallas, the most concerning environmental impact of space visits is the depletion of stratospheric ozone. A lack of international laws governing rocket emissions and fuel use further degrades environmental safety.

Billionaires like Bezos are not only harming the environment with private space companies—their primary companies are also aggravating the climate crisis. In 2019, Amazon unveiled its Climate Pledge after employees started pressuring the e-commerce giant to reduce its carbon footprint. The company committed to be carbon neutral by 2040 and run entirely on clean energy by 2025. However, since 2018, Amazon’s carbon footprint has consistently risen.

In 2021, the company launched a $2 billion venture capital fund to back companies building sustainable technologies.

Although these initiatives are under the guise of progress toward sustainability, they serve more as virtue signals. The same year Amazon announced their venture capital fund, the company produced 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and earned $469.8 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, millions of Amazon workers suffered immensely from layoffs, neglectful working conditions, and paycheck shortchanging.

Furthermore, the fund is only 1.2% of Jeff Bezos’ net worth of $164.8 billion.

“Investing that money into sustainable development initiatives on Earth is vastly more imperative than taking a joy ride into space.”

It is critical that entrepreneurs use their resources to invest in renewable resources that will not only curb climate change but also seek to alleviate impoverishment. According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, poverty is one of the main underlying factors of disaster risk. Lowincome countries experience a disproportionate share of the damage caused by climate change, including rising sea levels, drought, and extreme weather events. The space tourism industry is expected to reach $2.58 billion by 2031.

Investing that money into sustainable development initiatives on Earth is vastly more imperative than taking a joy ride into space.

The fascination with space and the yearning to understand the solar system has been a quintessential aspiration for billionaires, scientists, and ordinary people alike. However, space exploration for the purpose of space tourism cannot take precedence over climate change action. This is especially crucial for people like Musk, Branson, and Bezos, who have the power to mobilize their effectively endless resources to alleviate the climate crisis, rather than accelerate it.

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OPINION

QUEBEC'S HOSPITALS

NEED A MAJOR BOOST

by Maxine Bisera

It is no secret that Quebec’s healthcare system is in collapse.

At the peak of the pandemic, faced with record-high COVID-19 case numbers and a nationwide shortage of healthcare workers, it seemed that all provinces across Canada were struggling to stay afloat.

Quebec, however, has consistently made headlines for its novel approach to the pandemic. The province is the first and only province or territory in Canada to both enforce a curfew and vaccine passports. The government has even proposed a vaccine tax, although this was soon scrapped. While each of these decisions are controversial and divisive in their own right, one of the province’s announcements is especially of great concern to me— a January 19th proposal to reduce care standards in hospitals if

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the situation worsens.

This plan would allow hospitals to reduce the number of patient admissions and shorten the length of hospital stays, effectively shifting basic care responsibilities onto families and caregivers. Not only does this announcement violate the basic principles of the Hippocratic Oath, but it is a reflection of the poor structure of Quebec’s healthcare system. If after all these previous measures and restrictions, the only way to keep hospitals afloat is to deliberately lower our standard of care, there must be greater, underlying issues at hand.

It is worth noting that the problems plaguing Quebec hospitals aren’t unique to the province. In fact, there are several accounts online of unbelievably long emergency room wait times dating

back years, and the length of these visits only seems to be getting progressively longer even prior to the pandemic.

Outside of the hospital, finding a general practitioner can take years, leaving many families in the dark. Instead, they are encouraged to take their medical concerns to a nearby walk-in clinic or local community service center (CLSCs). Both options offer a limited range of services, and, after their own excruciatingly long wait time, they often just redirect those who are perhaps minorly sick or injured back to the hospital emergency room.

Long wait times for doctors and clinic appointments are only some of the health care system’s problems. Minority groups, especially Indigenous peoples in Canada, face further restrictions and inequities that deny them any proper

OPINION

treatment. Quebec’s healthcare system has always been under strain and poorly constructed. It just took a pandemic for these problems to become apparent.

The solution is to restructure Quebec’s healthcare system entirely. Beyond hiring more medical staff and giving them proper access to protective equipment, I suggest initiatives such as updating computer systems, offering a wider variety of services at CLSCs, and revisiting the permit system that limits the number of doctors and nurses that can work in a certain area.

I understand this is easier said than done, but an effort has to be made at the very least from our provincial government.

Before the pandemic, the last time Quebec attempted to completely overhaul its healthcare system was in 2014, when the Couillard government tried to reduce the number of health and social services centers from 182 to 30 at most in an attempt to save $220 million a year.

This all begs the question, “Why are we so reluctant to update and restructure a system that directly affects people’s well-being?”

To me, it just seems like attention is being placed elsewhere. A look at the CAQ’s 2018 campaign promises

shows exactly where the government’s priorities lie: cutting immigration and taxes, increasing secularism, and interestingly enough, privatizing healthcare. It is as if the government couldn’t even be bothered to try to improve the current public healthcare infrastructure, and they would rather default to having us pay out-of-pocket for our own treatments—a solution that further harms Quebec’s most vulnerable populations.

“Quebec’s healthcare system has always been under strain and poorly constructed—it just took a pandemic for these problems to become apparent.”

A socialized healthcare system should not have to resort to privatization because we have not distributed resources fairly. It is only now, as a direct result of COVID-19, that money has started pouring into the healthcare sector. In March 2021, the province had already spent nearly $12 billion in efforts to combat the virus. But why does it take a devastating pandemic for the

government to invest in our health? We should have been proactive rather than reactive, investing in our public systems rather than throwing money at them once they start to crumble. Just like many of our COVID-19 restrictions, which are implemented too late and lifted too early, our hospitals and clinics will never get the support they need if the economy is prioritized before people’s well-being.

For socialized healthcare to work, the government needs to care about its people. The system does not work if they decide protecting the French language is more important than protecting doctors and nurses from a very transmissible and deadly virus, or if they’d rather fund neverending construction projects than update an old and complicated hospital system.

Of course, I understand that funding and attention have to go towards other equally necessary sectors. That being said, healthcare should have always been at the top of the priority list. It is serving the most basic needs of people.

Despite all of this, I’m still thankful for my access to free healthcare. I believe that healthcare is a constantly changing field, one that requires constant improvement to ensure the needs of the community are being met. I just wish the Quebec government thought the same.

SPORTS

A Generation of Miracles

by Ezra Moleko & Josh Holtzman

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SPORTS

It’s easy to lionize our imaginings of the past when compared to the mundanity of the modern world.

Take, for example, Milo of Croton, a famous and likely mythologized Greek wrestler who won the Olympics no less than six times. Said to have been so vigorous that he could burst a headband by furrowing his eyebrows, so insatiable as to need to eat over 20 pounds of both bread and meat every day, and so Herculean that nobody could even close a finger on the hand of his outstretched arms. This guy was clearly unreal. Even if his mythos has extended beyond his actual abilities, the act of telling and re-telling has canonized him as a colossus. Surely, this man was a once-in-a-millennium type of specimen, something that nobody could come close to today.

Yet, consider our friend Milo in comparison to the athletic titans of our day, somebody like Lebron James or Serena Williams. It would be difficult for Milo to be beaten in a matchup of “feats of strength,” but does this make his opponents worse athletes overall? The answer to this is — and needs to remain — no. The athletes of today are more elite than ever before. As we develop more precise means of measuring athletic performance–timing, force, speed, statistics–we can visualize the expanding arc of human capability.

The increased scientific scrutiny on sports goes handin-hand with the increase in popularity and profitability of professional sports. While Milo was certainly the best wrestler of Athens, we cannot know for sure if he was the best in the world at the time. The ancient Olympics were nothing near the global event they are today. Today, our globally interconnected society has expanded and streamlined sports to sort for the best, most equipped, and most remarkable athletes we have ever seen.

Consuming huge amounts of meat and bread may be the dream diet of first-year bodybuilders, but over time, we’ve been able to craft even more effective diets for all body types. In fact, dietary science has become so deeply intertwined with sports that athletes’ diets tend to gain mainstream popularity. For example, Tom Brady’s infamous TB-12 diet, credited for prolonging his top-flight athletic career through his 30s and early 40s (although he was certainly no super athlete), became an extremely popular fad diet and even helped birth his Health and Wellness company of the same name.

It’s not only athletes’ fuel that has changed. The exercise regimens used for training, the medicine and treatment which help athletes recover from injury, as well as the increasing role of mental health monitoring in athletics have culminated in myriad competitive, capable sportspeople. In the past, an injury we might consider minor today was likely to take years off your career, rather than months or weeks, and you’d be lucky not to pay a steeper price. Those who tangled with our friend

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SPORTS

Milo can attest to this, as Greek contact sports were infamously destructive to the faces, bodies, and skulls of their participants. In contrast, Steelers Linebacker Ryan Shazier infamously lost the use of his legs in 2017 after an injury on-field left his spine dislocated, but was able to recover and regain the ability to walk within only a couple of years, even returning to workouts, though his career is likely over.

One of the primary causes of the jump in athletic performance is the unprecedented level of mental and physical training that athletes have access to nowadays.

Perhaps nothing has been more influential than the rising field of sports data analytics. Athletes across all sports now spend hours in the video room with dedicated video coaches dissecting and analyzing their performance and looking for potential areas of improvement. Athletes then use this information to hone their skills in the areas of their game that need the most improvement.

While athletes have had access to game film for many years, it was traditionally viewed as a secondary training source to, say, the gym. Now, the level of emphasis on the mental side of the game is, in many cases, equal to the physical. Further, the video footage available nowadays is coupled with high-tech sensors that track performance data, which gives coaches the ability to map out a player’s strengths and weaknesses, and create a personalized training regimen. Armed with this data, sprinters can better adjust the angle of their back off the blocks, football linemen can improve their launch timing after the snap, and baseball pitchers can modify their pitches’ rotations per minute for better movement.

Players of the past simply did not have access to such targeted training.

Data analytics does not only assist in performance training — it also plays a crucial role in health management, injury prevention, and recovery. During practices, many athletes now wear biometric trackers, which capture measurements on a plethora of relevant health data, helping to prevent injuries and improve recovery time.

For instance, the US women’s national volleyball team optimizes performance and recovery by tracking how many times each player jumps throughout a match. The MLB also recently approved the use of the Motus Sleeve, which tracks stress to a pitcher’s elbow in order to reduce the risk of a ligament tear requiring surgery. Coaches and trainers use this data to give players scheduled rest days, which was an unthinkable concept only a short while ago.

The sports world of the past would have considered taking a day off weak, and athletes would have felt pressured to play through slight injuries, which would inevitably become serious ones as players continued to ignore them, shortening careers and hampering long term performance. Athletes of today are generally not

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SPORTS

bound by such toxic thinking, and coaches have finally internalized that preemptive injury prevention, rather than treatment, maximizes performance in the long run.

In the age of a globalized economy, when citizens of nearly every country have viewing access to North American sports leagues and international competitions such as the Olympics, global interest in professional sports has drastically increased. This spurs grassroots development, which in turn allows athletic kids to pursue careers as professional athletes in sports that had effectively no presence in those countries pre-internet. Sports leagues now have access to an international player pool that did not exist previously. By adding more elite players to the mix while keeping the amount of players selected to play professionally relatively stable, the average level of athletic ability in those top tier leagues necessarily increases. The NBA, NHL, and MLB all have more foreignborn players than ever before, which is a testament to the global market for players, and a cause of the higher than ever athletic ability across all sports.

The Olympics were certainly a grand event in ancient Athens, but the market for sports entertainment is now significantly larger. The Global Sports Industry is now estimated between $400-$500 billion, with millions of people making a living directly from that income. At almost any level of organized competition, the rules of sports are tweaked to maximize their watch-ability.

Often, this has meant more offense. Because the majority of sports feature some variation of the basic “OffenseDefense” modality, and because watching offense is generally more engaging to the casual viewer, it’s a pretty simple money-move to put as much offense on the screen as possible.

The athletes of today are not only given the opportunity to succeed more within their sports, but they are also given opportunities to succeed within the market generally as brand icons. This allows many of them another distinct advantage over the average athlete of the past: a lot of money. Milo may have been well-regarded in Athens, but he was certainly not the same market force as Lebron James or David Beckham.

Ultimately, the athletes of today have some sizable advantages over their ancient counterparts. However, this doesn’t diminish or invalidate the advancements they’ve brought to their sports. Quite the opposite in fact: the flourishing of athletics, in general, should be seen as a sign of the ways in which global society has improved itself to allow for the prizing and rewarding of such unique talents. Milo of Croton could only afford to be a wrestler for a few months every four years, and then he spent the rest of his time as a military man. Today, athletes have the resources to take advantage of their talents, for the good of their sport and the inspiration of the next generation of even better, more equipped talents.

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a rivalry to define an age

in men’s tennis,

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by Leon von Kuenheim

SPORTS

Men’s tennis has long been dominated by three names: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. The unique and unprecedented dominance that these three have exacted over their sport is unlikely to be seen again.

Over the last couple seasons, it appeared that the triumvirate may have finally come undone. While Djokovic was still going strong, both Nadal and Federer were battling injury and fitness issues.

Federer remains injured to this day, but Nadal marked this year with a roaring comeback. When he beat top-seeded Medvedev in this year’s Australian Open, Nadal claimed the crown of most Grand Slams, proving that the greats still hold the reins, with the new Gard of Medvedev, Tsitsipas, and Zverev purring at their heels.

I do not write this article to further applaud Nadal for his twenty-first Grand Slam title, but rather, to include it as the next chapter in the two-decade narrative that these three men have written, and will likely continue to write.

When Federer won his first Grand Slam two decades ago at Wimbledon, he was just 21 years old. He has followed it up with another seven titles at Wimbledon, making him the record holder on those courts. In addition, Federer holds six Australian Open titles, second only to Djokovic, and a further five US Open titles. He only holds one French Open title, where Nadal reigns undisputed.

However, many will remember Federer best for his unique charm, always visible on and off the court. Not only is it reflected in his easy-going playing style, but also in some of his most memorable quotes. When questioned about his greatness in a 2018 interview by the Wall Street Journal, Federer informed the interviewer that, while he may be among the best in men’s tennis, he considers Serena Williams to be “one of the greatest, if not the greatest tennis player of all time.”

Meanwhile, Nadal brings a more fiery and ferocious presence to the court.

Like Federer, he has found a broad and adoring fanbase. As King of the Clay Courts, he was long mentioned in the same breath as Federer, but never got quite the consideration for the GOAT position that his rival did. This may change, nevertheless, after the historic 2022 Australian Open win which saw him reach 21 Grand Slam titles. Nadal now holds the record for most Grand Slam titles over Federer, and it is quite plausible that he will forever hold that one title more than him.

Djokovic is a more tricky figure. The youngest of the three, he joined the great rivalry in 2008 with his first Grand Slam win in Australia. Since then, he has caught up with the other two at an unprecedented rate and will possibly outdo their success by quite some margin before he retires. By all indicators, he should be considered the greatest, and presumably, in a few years down the line, there will be no arguing that fact.

However, Djokovic’s quiet demeanour and his “tendency to self-sabotage,” as Eurosport put it, have meant that he never amassed the same following as the other two outside of his native Serbia.

The antics at this year’s Australian Open, wherein his unvaccinated status caused him to be barred from the competition and deported from Australia, are just the latest in a series of controversial events that have served to tarnish his legacy.

Regardless of their differences, the three men have created a rivalry on the pitch that has propelled each to neverbefore-seen heights. To my knowledge, the only other example of a similar rivalry is the infamous battle between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi for the top of European football. Still, even that doesn’t match the one between Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic when it comes to duration and unquestionable superiority over other players.

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SPORTS

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by Max 40

SPORTS

So, the phrase is “once in a blue moon,” right?

I guess it’s appropriate, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blue moon in my 21 years on the planet. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen a red moon, either. But, in a country where our national colour is maple red, we should have a strong collective sense of when red is truly on the rise.

Now you may be asking yourself, what is he talking about? How is red on the rise? Has he lost his mind? The answer to all of those questions can be found in the triumphant surge of Canada’s men’s national soccer team.

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Soccer has been a popular sport in Canada for a long time. Many Canadian kids, from Victoria to St John’s, get their first taste of organized sports kicking a soccer ball into a tiny net before they even learn to tie their shoes. It’s the reason why I went on to play competitive soccer, and perhaps why so many have fond memories of orange slices after the game. According to Cube Toronto, over 750 000 Canadian kids from 3-17 play organized soccer, 200 000 more than those that lace up skates and take to the rink.

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Despite kids playing soccer en masse, there has never been a strong cultural affection towards Canada’s men’s national team. This is not to detract from the fantastic achievements of the national women’s team in recent years, including their gold medal at Tokyo 2020. But on the men’s side, there just has never been a group of Canadian players good enough for kids to look up to, or to bring the country to the top of world football.

Without question, everything has changed over the past eighteen months. Canadian soccer is at its peak. With three matches to go in CONCACAF (North American) qualifying for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Canada has all but secured their place, sitting undefeated atop the standings.

And we, as Canadians, should be celebrating and cheering the team on as they roll into the Middle East come November.

Perhaps the biggest reason Canada sits in this great position is in large part due to the wealth of talent in the squad. The men’s team currently has eighteen players who play for European clubs, headlined by Bayern Munich’s Alphonso Davies, who is widely regarded as one of the top soccer talents in the world.

Davies, a 21-year-old born in a refugee camp in Ghana to Liberian parents, may now be the most recognizable Canadian athlete in the world. Davies is a marvel to watch on the pitch.

His speed, touch, and physical prowess on the field is unmatched by most of his competitors, who find themselves breathless and without the ball, trying to keep up with the Canadian phenom.

At five, his family was able to leave the refugee camp and move to Edmonton, Alberta. Here, Davies started playing organized soccer. After

growing up in Edmonton for almost a decade, Davies went to Vancouver to join the Vancouver Whitecaps FC Residency, the MLS team’s youth program, which serves as a pipeline to their professional squad. After only about a year in the program, he progressed to the senior team at the age of fifteen and joined Bayern Munich, one of the best teams in the world, by eighteen.

Winning the Bundesliga Rookie of the Year for 2019-2020, he quickly elevated himself to one of the best players in the world.

Sometimes, when a phenomenal player makes the switch to playing for their country, or perhaps moves to a new team, there is an expected period of transition where they must acclimate to their new team and their brand of soccer.

This has not been the case with Davies. From his first match for Canada through to his most recent appearance, Davies has both elevated the overall quality of play for Canada’s XI while producing some dazzling highlights along the way.

Even though this is a print article, I recommend everyone reading this article to pause for two minutes, search up Davies’s goal against Panama from last October, allow your jaw to drop, and then come back and finish reading. By playing the game he loves, Davies is inspiring a generation of young Canadians to watch, play, and participate in a sport at which Canada has historically sucked, but is now beginning to thrive.

Significant praise should also be given to manager John Herdman. Herdman, an English national who came to Canada to coach the women’s team, has since done wonders with the men’s squad. After elevating the Canadian women to the top of world football, he took his talents to the men’s side, and through his reliance on communication, motivation, strong in-game tactics and squad management, his leadership has been an unquestionable tour de force for a young Canadian team that needed guidance.

The time is now; this really is the “once in a red moon” moment for Canada to capitalize on its newfound relevance in the sport of soccer. It is imperative to gain as many fans nationally as possible in time for the World Cup later this year, and beyond as well. The Canadian Premier League, a fledgling national league launched in 2017, is slowly growing, and Canada’s current success has been, and will continue to be, instrumental in its expansion.

The squad is young, very young. While I highlighted Davies, Jonathan David and Tajon Buchanan are every bit as exciting. The future for Les Rouges is bright, and they are only going to get better as they face stronger competition and grow together. All it takes now is for Canadians to start paying attention. With stars like these and the success they’re producing, it’s hard not to.

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